Vocal Pop Music -- Do you listen to lyrics?

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nomadologist

Guest
Tate, at least he's that self-aware--most of the worst sexists on here would die defending their claim to never having had a sexist thought in their lives. Seems like that counts for something...or else my already bleak outlook on humanity has another reason to get worse...
 
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mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
I'm afraid I'm totally reprehensibly prurient and I love jiggy stuff, the jiggier, the more homophobic the better, it just doesn't bother me in the slightest. Personal fave of mine at the moment is that Elephant Man tune where he goes on about 'badman nah go see Brokeback Mountain'. HAHAHAHAHAHA.

And, since we're on lyrics, a little favourite of mine from Carcass.

Manifestation On Verrucose Urethra

Bloody hypertrophy of papillae spewing urethritis like urticaria
Septicaemia filled dermis scorched by acidic uric nocturia.

Verrucose urethra
Glutenous condyloma

Ureterocoeles excreting warm, decaying, cystic pemphigus
Gnawing at flesh with rancid uraturial lust.

It's less the fact he wrote them that does my head in, it's the fact he managed to remember them.
 
swears

swears

preppy-kei
carcass

I was introduced to a member of Carcass as a little kid by my nan. She knew one of their mums, dunno which one. I was introduced in the road to a very tall young guy with long hair "Have you heard of Carcass, James?" I was about eight, so I hadn't. I don't think she'd heard his music because she was under the impression he was "one of these hippie types".

This is true, honest.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
swears said:
I was introduced to a member of Carcass as a little kid by my nan. She knew one of their mums, dunno which one. I was introduced in the road to a very tall young guy with long hair "Have you heard of Carcass, James?" I was about eight, so I hadn't. I don't think she'd heard his music because she was under the impression he was "one of these hippie types".

This is true, honest.
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LOL this is a great story
 
STN

STN

sou'wester
swears said:
I was introduced to a member of Carcass as a little kid by my nan. She knew one of their mums, dunno which one. I was introduced in the road to a very tall young guy with long hair "Have you heard of Carcass, James?" I was about eight, so I hadn't. I don't think she'd heard his music because she was under the impression he was "one of these hippie types".

This is true, honest.
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But Carcass were sort of hippy types - they were vegans for a start 'wheat not meat', 'gore not war' - I can't remember
what the other 'x not y' was...
 
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mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
dHarry said:
what do you like about homophobic lyrics?
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I find them puerile and sometimes genuinely shocking, both of which are traits which I find endearing. They make me laugh, it's such playground stuff. I'm a big fan of retarded straight men, for pure entertainment value. It's part of the same trait that led me to watch and distribute completely ridiculous exploitation, horror and mondo films.

I also like to imagine lithe black queens vogueing to the more extreme chi-chi man tracks, an image which I've seen in real life and have yet to see on film. I'm also a big fan of the dozens and people killing each other because they insulted their mothers, it's kinda a DeSadeian thing. Masochism mebbe. And I'm not saying this to be inflammatory, I genuinely have an interest.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
mistersloane said:
it's kinda a DeSadeian thing. Masochism mebbe. And I'm not saying this to be inflammatory, I genuinely have an interest.
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I get down with that kind of thing, too. I like the perversity of outrageously offensive things, sometimes, as a gesture. I understand where you're coming from, even though I know not many people here get down with the Saint Genet type thang
 
STN

STN

sou'wester
mistersloane said:
thrash not ash. not as good though.
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God that's lame - these were from the album where Alison Moyet was bafflingly quoted on the sleeve weren't they?

Incidentally, if I killed everyone who'd ever cussed my mum I'd have very few friends, particularly in the 'people I was at school with' category...
 
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mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
nomadologist said:
I get down with that kind of thing, too. I like the perversity of outrageously offensive things, sometimes, as a gesture. I understand where you're coming from, even though I know not many people here get down with the Saint Genet type thang
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I just don't understand how anyone can get offended by art. It's so harmless, but I really appreciate people who try.

And I really like the fact that all these blokes are going round going 'I'm so big, I'm so hard, me am dominant hunter gatherer protector', I think it's funny. I'd much rather listen to that than songs about love or heartbreak. Or Derrida. Get enough of that at home lol.

What I find fascinating about lyrics at the moment - I remember it starting with Biggie and Jay-Z, though I'm sure there were earlier examples - is the fact that so much of it is based on memory now, the ability to memorise and then freely repeat fucking huge Ilyiad type stanzas really does my head in, it's an ability I'm really really jealous and in awe of, I can't do it to save my life. I also think it weirdly coincides with internet culture, that suddenly written and spoken culture came to being so prominently...I wish I knew what it meant.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
mistersloane said:
I just don't understand how anyone can get offended by art. It's so harmless, but I really appreciate people who try.

And I really like the fact that all these blokes are going round going 'I'm so big, I'm so hard, me am dominant hunter gatherer protector', I think it's funny. I'd much rather listen to that than songs about love or heartbreak. Or Derrida. Get enough of that at home lol.

What I find fascinating about lyrics at the moment - I remember it starting with Biggie and Jay-Z, though I'm sure there were earlier examples - is the fact that so much of it is based on memory now, the ability to memorise and then freely repeat fucking huge Ilyiad type stanzas really does my head in, it's an ability I'm really really jealous and in awe of, I can't do it to save my life. I also think it weirdly coincides with internet culture, that suddenly written and spoken culture came to being so prominently...I wish I knew what it meant.
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I think some of the most interesting things happen on the level of "performance" nowadays, and that's a level on which it's hard to pin down "racism" "sexism" "classism" (see also: Borat thread). Useless to point fingers and get self-righteous when it would be constructive to examine these things instead. Sometimes the performance of these negative forces is the only inroads we have to understanding them. There's also the "we're all humans, get off it already" element where it's so upper middle class leisure-like to waste a lot of time assuaging your own guilt by condemning others.

With hip-hop lyrics it's really style over substance a lot of the time. It might say something that they often use over-the-top/questionable subject matters to mnemonically keep those swathes of stanzas stuck in your head...
 
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mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
nomadologist said:
With hip-hop lyrics it's really style over substance a lot of the time. It might say something that they often use over-the-top/questionable subject matters to mnemonically keep those swathes of stanzas stuck in your head...
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Yeah, I just wish I could do it too, I'm rap-deficient ( TM )
 
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
tate said:
Yeah dude, 'sexism so long as there's some panache,' that sounds brilliant, real recipe there.
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Well in hip hop sexism is pretty embedded, and as such you look beyond the mere content to what they are doing with the form, its the old limit your terms to express greater creativity thing. It doesn't excuse it by any means, but rather that something of interest us done with it(yes panache a lot of the time, a witty turn of phrase or innovative piece of imagery) than just plain old sexism. Although, of course, it is none the less sexist. Actually the reason why sexism/misogyny in rock is such a turn off is because it is frequently employed with zero creativity, there is literally no upside to its hoary repetitions, there is nothing to alloy its rancid aftertaste.
 
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soundslike1981

Well-known member
gek-opel said:
Well in hip hop sexism is pretty embedded, and as such you look beyond the mere content to what they are doing with the form, its the old limit your terms to express greater creativity thing. It doesn't excuse it by any means, but rather that something of interest us done with it(yes panache a lot of the time, a witty turn of phrase or innovative piece of imagery) than just plain old sexism. Although, of course, it is none the less sexist. Actually the reason why sexism/misogyny in rock is such a turn off is because it is frequently employed with zero creativity, there is literally no upside to its hoary repetitions, there is nothing to alloy its rancid aftertaste.
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You know, maybe I don't believe in the bogeyman of rockism because I never listened to the right kind of rock--sexism in rock seems limited to a small strain of 70s "hard rock" and 80s hair-metal.

Have you ever heard Mark Kozelek's singer-songwriterification of AC/DC? Pretty funny, actually--singing fairly sexist lines with an earnest, love-song melodicism, actually occasionally seems to change the machismo into an honest-sounding expression of desire. Actually the only work of his I can really enjoy--his Red House Painters stuff is just so languid and sexless (and more musically aimless, less honed).
 
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shudder

Well-known member
kind of on the same page as you soundslike, w/r/t sexism in rock. Probably b/c my parents didn't grow up in rock-listening places, I know hardly any of that dinosaur rock. In fact, people always find that precise gap so shocking in someone who is, you know, a pretty big music fan...
 
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soundslike1981

Well-known member
shudder said:
kind of on the same page as you soundslike, w/r/t sexism in rock. Probably b/c my parents didn't grow up in rock-listening places, I know hardly any of that dinosaur rock. In fact, people always find that precise gap so shocking in someone who is, you know, a pretty big music fan...
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The weird thing is, even if I had heard it--I'm still not sure how one arrives at the Guiding Hand of the Dinosaur Rockers, the abiding menace of dadrock. Especially re: the "authenticity" trope: I mean, has there ever been a more blatently inauthentic, pompous form of music, more about image and ephemera and popularity and (though I don't feel it) "mindless fun"? I mean, Alice Cooper? AC/DC? Fucking KISS? Poison? David Bowie could only dream of such peacockery. . . Maybe the other strain, Chicago or Boston or Kansas or Cheap Trick, the other stuff I literally couldn't identify by sound, maybe they were really into being the first authentic Delta Blues since before the War, or something.
 
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shudder

Well-known member
yeah, I mean I don't think too many ppl would hold up Kiss as standard bearers for traditional rockist authenticity (besides the PARTY PARTY PARTY aspect). Maybe something like Aerosmith would be a better candidate?
 
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